Personal Branding: The Value of a Platform

Shakespeare wrote “All the world’s a stage” and his words ring more true today than ever. If you have something to say or something to sell, whether you are speaking to one person or many people, essentially, you’re on a stage. (Hyatt. M, 2012)

The Internet has created a stage like no other before it. People can find groups of people to speak to easier and faster. They can research information and form opinions more efficiently. Ultimately the Internet gives people an opportunity to scale their platform easily, giving people the opportunity to influence more and sell more.

Needless to say that as more people have taken advantage of this platform the more cluttered the Internet has become. Leading to people struggling to be seen amongst a sea of content created and shared by millions of people around the world. Social networks sued to be a great place to share your messages and while they are still effective, they lack the credibility that a personal brand needs to establish itself. People who take personal branding seriously are looking to build their own platform, instead of simply using other platforms to share their message.

Building you own platform can be as simple as a blog or as elaborate as developing a website and a host of services that develop content. Whether you prefer a simple or elaborate approach it’s increasingly important to understand that there is more credibility in developing your own platform, than leveraging someone else’s platform.

In our course Online Personal Branding we cover a number of benefits of owning your own platform, however in this article we will only cover three:

Introduction to the World

Your platform becomes the place that introduces you to the world. It’s the place people can visit to know more about you, it’s more informative than social networks and does not limit you to their information displays.

Your platform is a place on the Internet where you can control how you come across. In almost every platform you don’t own, its very possible to be misunderstood, for something you say to be taken out of context, and for entities like fake news to influence how people perceive you or your industry. Owning your own platform gives you the ability to control your voice in a clearer, more detailed manner. It allows your to set the record straight, provide context and build an information base of your ideas and opinion.

Credibility

Investing in your platform shows people you’re taking yourself seriously and starts to build credibility around your brand. This credibility becomes important both for the internet powerhouses like Google and for your community of people who follow you.

Google, uses your website as a place to attribute your credibility. It tracks people who link to your website, it analyses your content and ranks you among your competitors as more or less credible based on a host of factors. Google then uses this information to rank you in Google Search, so the better your credibility with Google, the more people will discover you online.

People see websites as more credible than social networks, especially with a scourge of fake news, Internet users will increasingly to look for the source of information regarding news they see in social circles. Personal brand website and platforms become the source of information for you and your brand. Adding credibility to the messages you wish to share.

Launch Platform

Your platform will attract a community around it. Over time this community will grow, especially if you commit to consistently generating content for this community.

Once the community is established and they infer credibility to your personal brand, you would be able to use the platform to launch new ideas, products and services.

If you’ve already started pushing your personal brand but don’t know how you’re doing, we can help you with a brand audit to measure your impact and plan for the future.